Food and Drink Federation

The Food and Drink Federation (FDF) is a membership organisation that represents and advises UK food and drink manufacturers.

Membership

Its members are companies of all sizes as well as trade associations and groups dealing with specific sectors of the industry.

The food and drink manufacturing industry employs around 400,000 people and as many as 1.2 million in ancillary services; it accounts for 15% of the UK's total manufacturing sector by value; it buys two-thirds of what farmers produce.

The Federation tackles a range of issues on behalf of its members under the three core areas of health and wellbeing; food safety and science; and sustainability and competitiveness; it also aims to highlight the work industry conducts under these areas. For example its Five-fold Environmental Ambition sets out where manufacturers are looking to make a difference to the environment through reducing CO2 emissions; sending zero food and packaging waste to landfill from 2015; reducing the level of packaging reaching households; improving water efficiency to reduce water use; and embedding environmental standards in their transport practices to achieve fewer and friendlier food miles.

Food and Drink

Food and Drink is a long-running British television series on BBC Two. First broadcast between 1982 and 2002, it was the first national television programme in the UK to cover the subject of food and drink without cookery and recipe demonstrations.

History

Created in 1982 by BBC producer Henry Murray from an original idea by Jancis Robinson, Fay Maschler and Paul Levy, the first series was presented by Simon Bates and Gillian Miles, and introduced Jilly Goolden in her first regular television appearances as the programme's wine expert.

Russell Harty presented filmed location reports from exceptional restaurants around Britain. This series featured the innovative idea of a small contributing audience of 20 people who were called "tasters and testers". The first series broadcast in the summer months but was instantly successful, drawing an average audience of 1.5 million a week, a high rating for BBC Two in the summer in the 1980s.